


through another set of eyes

by popsky



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Pining, Semi-Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsky/pseuds/popsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Erwin took his hand, it was less about holding and holding back, and more about scars meeting scars.</p>
<p>(They are more similar than Levi thinks they have the right to be).</p>
            </blockquote>





	through another set of eyes

**Author's Note:**

> A semi-drabble for Valentine's day. Lovely Amariys beta'ed this too. ♥

 

_through another set of eyes_

-

is where they see, they see, they see; and like ever, they fail to understand (oooh, _human)._

 

-

 

(1).

Perfection was a double-edged sword with no drawbacks, a woman and a soldier on each sharpened sides.

Petra Rall’s heart – already offered to the lost cause of mankind – had always wanted a little piece of both worlds. Strength and grace, strength and grace; the day Petra left home to pursue her dreams, her ill mother looked at her in the eye. She kissed the small palm of her daughter, just half an inch below the crooked fingers, skin tight from gripping steel blades. The touch lingered until today, in the sturdy momentums of unending slaughter.

There was strength in her smile, the softness of her hair: contradictions joined seamlessly at the edges like a perfect human her mother was. Petra had always wanted to be one.

“Scouting Legion’s two absolute _best_ ,” Eren sighed to his broom, mouth crooked and slanted into a dreamy grin. His hand came up to pinch his own cheek – remains of boyish fat that was still there, beneath his skin, tender between his fingers.  “I seriously thought I was still dreaming, but when I woke up, they were really _there._ Saying I could join _._ ” He looked up, eyes bright; every mother in the world would be so proud. _“_ I want to be as strong; someday, as soon as I can.”

A smile, and Petra took Eren’s hand gently in hers. Strength and grace, strength and grace; like this, she felt so grateful to fight for humanity. 

Once upon a time, hearts were slow, steady, and content.

-

-

-

(2).

Maria is thick and Rose is thick too and Sina is even thick _er_ , but

Levi supposed it was not enough.

No, it was not. Whispers still reached him, amidst the loud whirr of shooting cords and hard steel cutting bones; they were so clear that he would think the titan in front of him was the one speaking. Part of him could tell, for some reason, that the source was either leagues away, far inside the walls – or maybe in his own head, already faded but still echoing after all the years.

_“—splattering everywhere, you remember? And now that monster that did it became a new captain.”_

The titan smiled at him, and Levi stared back. It looked almost pretty, at this moment: a seven meter body of flesh and bloody carnage, ridiculously the dead one.

Part of him understood who the monster was. Embraced it, even; continuously surviving from it, growing, and _grateful_. Another part was backing away from him in disgust, as if he was the one eating human flesh. As if he belonged to the swarm of people who laugh with their friends and kiss their children to sleep. Dying like stomped ants and be laugh _ed_ at – by another, who breathed sugar and glowed like diamond jewelries; small monstrosities who smiled like they meant it. As if he belonged to both: humanity, with cruel hearts at the sinister parts of their chests, fluttering like paper; their sickening fragility pulling the parts of his empty-eyed commander, piece by piece, limb by limb.

No. Unlike them, Levi did not need to find an answer, did not need to be fought for.

He ripped the jaws. The titan no longer smiled.

-

Sometimes, he felt like Erwin could _see_ the whispers, instead of hearing.

There were tons of reasons why the Legion was so adamant on winning Eren Jaeger in the trial. Erwin and Levi could see it, in his eyes: the fierce resolve, the blind devotion, the deep-clenching _bloodthirst_ that dilated his pupils and clawed his hands. Then there were the small matters, too – fleeting details that only Erwin’s wariness could notice – the way people averted their gazes from Eren, pupils narrowing into their own black pits of claustrophobic darkness. Eren didn’t seem to be aware to most of his situation, or most of _everything,_ but Erwin’s eyes were nostalgic in a different kind of way.

And Levi supposed it was understandable. Eren Jaeger was, after all, unlike him, still a boy. A greenhorn: young soldier who screamed in joy after his first solo kill; whose eyes still large and tears still fresh and severed tooth growing, definitely abnormally, in his open mouth.

Eren Jaeger was a human, even after everything.

Monsters, Erwin once said, were neither the fifteen meter flesh whose roar echoing to the sky, longing for freedom; nor the fifteen years old who smiled to his squad because he meant it. Monsters, Levi knew, were integrated part of humanity; the ugly side of him that twisted and contorted, fluttering and sinister, when Erwin looked at humans – at _someone else_ – like that. 

Ironic how much of a human he was, because it had _hurt._

-

-

(3).

“You _monster,”_ someone had said, a thousand times over.

Erwin heard things, too. Sometimes, when he bled more than  a human was allowed to, there was phosphenes bursting at the veins of his eyelids – blackening his vision and spinning around his world, just out of his reach. Often, seconds away before blackness, he thought it would be his last.

(Leagues away, someone was dying,

and as always, it was not yet him.)

-

-

(4).

“Corporal, Sir,” Eren once asked, “what does a Titan look like to you?”

The coffee he just started stirring swirled into a mesmerizing blackness; and Levi didn’t look up. “Did Erwin ask you a weird question again. ”

“No, Sir.” Eren sounded sheepish. “I mean yes. I – mean, no, I don’t think it’s weird, but – “

“Oversized, ugly-ass retards,” Levi curtly replied, “is that what you see?”

“…is that how you see them, Sir?”

“I don’t,” Levi didn’t know why he continued stirring, or talking about things he didn’t know was true. “I don’t know. I don’t _look_ at them. Only the back of their necks.”

There was something akin to admiration at Eren’s eyes, at those last words, and Levi found his coffee too creamy it stickered his throat. The world had annoying ways when telling him not to tell lies.

“For me their faces are all the same, Sir,” Eren confessed softly to his coffee table, after a minute of silence. “I can never differentiate one another. They all look that _one –”_ he paused in an unreadable second– “the titan who ate my mother.”

The coffee lurched acidly inside his stomach. “I see,” he said. “What did Erwin say?”

 

 “Oh, they smile, Sir,“ Eren said, slightly beaming. “Commander said, the titans always smile. ”

 

-

(5).

In the past, Levi used to humor the adventurous, frisky side of him: flying around with his gear, attracting a stupid-faced titan until it got too close, almost _intimate,_ even – then, only after the view became too disgusting, he killed; so fast that its expression was preserved. There were consequences, too, afterwards: scratches on his fingertips, bruises on his thigh, scrapes on his back; colorful and vivid against his skin but hidden under crisp fabric of his shirt. The scars were small, and hidden, but inflamed and _alive_ ; maybe that was why Erwin would always notice them right away. That was how Erwin found him the first time.

When Erwin took his hand, it was less about holding and holding back, and more about scars meeting scars, and – it was so difficult to pretend. To forget how unmistakable of a beast he was, inside; because that erratic part in his chest _rampaged_ and rushing so much blood in his vessels, it was violently erratic and _trying to crack open his ribcage_ –

“Levi,” Erwin’s grip tightened in unreadable ferocity, “What’s wrong?”

There were bodies at their feet – smiling, dead, peaceful bodies. He was not.

“I am not something that you are,“ Levi managed between sucked breaths, because the way Erwin looked at him like that was somehow too close, too much, too _everything,_ and his hands twitched restlessly like they wanted to find something to kill. Or grab, viciously, and never let go. He did neither.

But Erwin knew – Erwin _always_ knew – and that was what made Levi afraid the most.

“I don’t care of what you are,” Erwin gripped harder, as if answering his unspeakable question; fingers finding the radial part of Levi’s wrist, the place where there was that monstrous pulse – beating at his every syllable, frighteningly even stronger under his clutch. “And I don’t care of what you _think_ you are.” The whisper behind the walls buzzed, and fell away to deafness. “Anything that keeps you alive – whatever it is – has to stay right _here_.”

He brought his hands to Levi’s heart, and for the briefest of seconds, the rampage stopped to an abrupt asystole. Erwin loomed close to him, body too large and strong grip too inhumane and eyes too dark and looking at him like _that,_ and Levi thought _–_

(He was – ?)

 

-

-

-

Once upon a time, they used to be human.

“Levi,” The hiss in Erwin’s breath mimicked the sizzle of titan smoke around them: slow, relieving, painful, and hot against his skin. “Levi.”  


Maybe, they still are.

 -

-

-   



End file.
